Where to in the Future
I have found my thoughts turning more and more to the direction the Australian and world political authorities are leading humanity. The reality is starting to dawn on most people, of the immensity of economic change that is occurring right now, sliding the world into a deep recession (probably a depression of several years). For many, for most probably, it is going to lead to greater personal challenges in achieving and maintaining life purpose, security, and what we regard as our individual quality of life.
Two things have particularly concerned me, after the pandemic status of the coronavirus was announced. One of these has been the questionable ‘science’ that had swayed political authorities to declare a pandemic. The other has been the hope and optimism that over the next 12 to 18 months the corporate sector would be able to produce a competent and safe vaccine, when all the major efforts over the last two decades by the dominating drug companies, have been unsuccessful in this venture—due mostly to the biological survival mechanisms of respiratory RNA viruses and the inability of compromised immune systems to respond to a vaccination. I will expand on these.
Scientific researchers, particularly biologists, have been concerned for more than fifty years, with the exponentially increasing human population, the decreasing species biodiversity, the world climate change, and the destruction of animal and plant habitats. These changes increase the probability that pathogenic viruses will ‘jump’ from various animal species to infect humans, and will cull the most immunocompromised people from the human population—this is nature at work.
Fanciful thinking vs the Scientific Method
A clearer understanding of why a decision was made to isolate people in their homes in Wuhan in January, is now starting to appear in the media. The decision seems to have been taken by a few elite Wuhan authorities with enough power to shut the whole city (and province) down. It appears the decision was most likely made based on political fear and fanciful thinking , and not on scientific logic, common sense and rational thinking.
This was an unfounded fear, firstly for the political survival of these individuals within the communist hierarchy, and secondly an unfounded fear for the lives of the citizens. The decision was based on no information about the ecology and behaviour of the mystery SARS-type of virus, nor how lethal this virus was compared to the SARS-CoV-1 that also occurred in China in 2002-2003. The medical authorities advising the political elite, provided the worst scenario, to protect themselves from political persecution, then used their credentials as doctors and scientific researchers to defend their fanciful explanations which generated public fear and panic.
Authorities in the broader world witnessed the rapid spread of this coronavirus, and with limited or no real scientific evidence of the fatality potential accompanying this spread, along with typical media footage focused on the panic and fear within the Wuhan population, they also chose the worst scenario and declared the Covid19 to be a pandemic, indicating it probably would have similar consequences to the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. Several weeks on from this declaration, it now appears that this virus certainly has the potential to spread very quickly like most cold viruses do, but that it is not anywhere as lethal as was first thought.
I recently witnessed this type of behaviour in some of the fire-fighting authorities during the South Coast bushfire crisis. In the initial phase of the fires (near Bermagui where my property is) when the ‘apocalyptic’ firestorm consumed Cobargo on the morning of December 31, people were demonstrating fear, talking about the worst that could happen, and living on the border of panic.
Their decisions were based more on desperation and fanciful thinking, and not on rational thinking, common sense and science logic. I think this is quite normal initial behaviour in these types of chaotic situations. For several days until reliable data about the movement of the fires could be gathered, the fire authorities enacted the ‘worst-case’ scenario, and strongly pressured people to leave of the area. Some of them behaved irrationally.
In time, through observation and discussion, the locals became more confident and less prone to panic. The decision-makers soon demonstrated measured and thoughtful decisions, relaxed movement in some areas, tightened it in others, and confidence quickly returned to the locals in the area. However the media was having a field-day, exaggerating and fuelling broader panic and dismay. Not all journalists present balanced approaches to these types of cataclysmic events— some journalistic behaviour is self-serving. We have some of this occurring now with the coronavirus pandemic.
There is now defensive authority rationalising the questionable decisions that have been made to isolate the world population from the spread of the virus—and subsequently driving the world economy onto a knife edge where it could collapse. We all wonder now about the hardship, misery and death that economic collapse could bring.
Scientific thinking is new, less than 500 years old (2000 years if you accept the advances in early Greek logic and enquiry). The scientific methods of inquiry eliminate superstition and fanciful explanations, and when applied to technology, is a fantastic inventor, but it has no morals or values—it is a method of inquiry based on five principles which are: Firstly ask a question that can be empirically investigated; then attach a research hypothesis to a theory; then use methodology that rigorously investigates the question; then provide coherent and rigorous reasoning relating the results, and finally, be able to replicate the research through independent data, analytical methods, laboratories, and instruments.
Claude Bernard wrote: ‘Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed. Indeed, proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomenon will no longer appear’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Bernard)
Unfortunately, according to a review in ‘The Economist’, titled: ‘How Science goes Wrong’, nearly 75% of published science these days, is ‘rubbish’—have a quick look at this on: http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/merchant/pdf/How_Science_Goes_Wrong.pdf.
Epidemiology is a scientific discipline that so often is hijacked by interest groups and demagogues to manipulate their agendas. Exaggeration and downright lies based on epidemiological results, can be designed to forward agendas by alarming and sensitising an unsuspecting public. It benefits certain groups, regulators and corporations, to have the public afraid, even when the risks are trivial. (For more on this read: https://reason.com/2016/12/23/an-epidemic-of-bad-epidemiology/).
Governments across the world had been relying on mathematical projections to help guide their decisions to identify the SARS-CoV-2 infections to a pandemic status. Even now, months into the pandemic, much of the information about how SARS-CoV-2 spreads is still unknown and must be estimated or assumed—and this limits the precision of any reliable forecasts. For example, a late January version of the modelling, estimated that SARS-CoV-2 would be at least as virulent as the H1N1 influenza-A virus, in necessitating the hospitalization of those infected and probably overwhelming the facilities. That has turned out to be incorrect in all but a few cases (Eg the city of New York).
These types of mathematical projections are based around trying to understand how susceptible people are to the virus. The ‘Measured Case Fatality Rate’ is the susceptibility model that has been used by advising epidemiologists, to influence politicians to originally declare the CoVid19 a lethal pandemic. This is a measure of the total number of new deaths in a period of time, divided by the total number of people who became infected with the particular disease in that time. This model is supposed to measure overall, how dangerous the present coronavirus is to the population. There was very limited, questionable and localised data available to accurately demonstrate the Measured Case Fatality Rate leading up to the decision to declare the pandemic.
Firstly not all people who contracted the virus and recovered, were ever tested—most people get the initial cold symptoms located in the sinus and not the secondary throat/cough symptoms, and therefore don’t think they have contracted the virus. This makes the total number of people who became infected, a suspect number, and greatly exaggerates the virulence of SARS-CoV-2. To give you a reasonable understanding of this, I recommend you watch this Youtube interview of March 31st with Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UO3Wd5urg0).
Also, at the early stage of coronavirus infection in China, there were no definitive tests to determine if a person had died directly from their immunocompromised medical conditions or the coronavirus initiating an immune-hyperstimulation of a cytokine storm in the lungs—this test has only been available in the last couple of weeks. There has been no way to determine whether the deaths were directly due to coronavirus, or some other direct cause, such as terminal cancer or heart attack.
For example, here are some: “Facts about Covid-19” (5th April), published in the Swiss Propaganda Research:
“According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS (the average age of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased were over 70 years old.
“80% of the deceased had suffered from two or more chronic diseases. 50% of the deceased had suffered from three or more chronic diseases. The chronic diseases included in particular cardiovascular problems, diabetes, respiratory problems, and cancer.”
“Less than 1% of the deceased were healthy people, i.e. people without preexisting chronic diseases. Only about 30% of the deceased were women.”
“50% to 80% of test-positive people remain completely symptom-free, and over 90% of test-positive people develop at most, mild or moderate symptoms.”
Now the world at large is starting to get actual data on the affects of this SARS CoV-2, and more and more scientificlly thinking people are questioning if the right decisions have been made, while many politicians, media and opportunist corporate sectors are defending the decisions with authority and propaganda, clinging to their original presumptions for dear life. They are in a position of authority to enact the propaganda media blitz, that is currently occurring. I think the general public finds itself wanting to be positive about this pandamic, and wanting to demonstrate higher purpose human values, but they are at the mercy of having little access to sound data and scientific logic around the events
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The Corporate Opportunistic Agenda
Opportunities have to be grasped, especially in capitalism. The obvious corporate agenda is now the marketing of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. The push to make a coronavirus vaccine is moving at breakneck speed—there is money to be made and people to save.
The key questions about how our immune system fights off the SARS-CoV-2 (and how to safely trigger a similar immune response using a vaccine) to this day, still remain unanswered, even with nearly two decades of intense research. In order to develop a safe and competent vaccination, these questions about the immune system need to be answered through rigorous scientific experimentation.
There is pressure to bypass this, and it is based on the fear element associated with the coronavirus pandemic. So far cooler heads have prevailed, and hopefully answers will come over the next year, from current studies focusing on mapping the immune responses of infected people, along with studies on animals infected with SARS-CoV-2. Yet, there are irresponsible vaccination researchers who are saying that this lack of information should not restrict them as ‘experts’, from beginning vaccination trials with people.
A primary question relating to the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, is whether or not people can develop immunity to the virus (and the developing strains), and will it last?
The aim of vaccines is to generate in a person, a heightened immune focus against a potentially infectious pathogen—before the person becomes exposed to the pathogen. In theory, this should ‘key-in’ a rapid and immediate response to shut down the pathogen before it can spread and threaten the health of the person. Vaccines do not ‘strengthen’ the immune system. They are used to prod a ‘lazy’, damaged, or slow-acting immune system into continually looking for the pathogen, even when it is not in the body.
People with compromised immune systems mostly have slow responses to infections, and this allows pathogens such as viruses, to quickly grow in population size before the immune system can mount an adequate defence. Often when there are delays in controlling the pathogen, a damaged or scarred immune system will eventually overreact, and cause increased illness and even kill the person due to CD8 T-cell initiated cytokine storms, for example. This is the immune overreaction that is happening to those people who are dying from respiratory distress related to the SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Studies of the four human coronaviruses (that have caused about 20 percent of all common colds that you have experienced over your lifetime—refer to my earlier blog: ‘Lifestyle Techniques to Boost your Chances for Defeating Coronavirus), and the SARS-CoV-1, have led most researchers to assume that people who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection will be protected from reinfection for only a very short period of time. But this assumption needs to be backed by collected evidence over the next year or more.
There is adequate evidence that people who have high levels of antibodies against the four human coronaviruses can be easily reinfected several months after eliminating the last cold virus. The susceptibility to reinfection depends on the condition of their immune system, factors of their lifestyle, and their relationship with drugs such as steroids and immune suppressors.
The evidence is more ambiguous for the SARS-CoV-1 (2003) and the MERS-CoV (2012). The people who recovered from MERS, lost their immune defence response after a few years, and have again become vulnerable to reinfection by this virus. There is no existing scientific evidence anywhere in the world, of long-lasting immunity to any of the types of coronaviruses. This means that each year, people will probably need to be vaccinated against the different and emerging strains of coronavirus—as has been attempted with the influenza viruses. On the other hand, people can improve their immune competency through lifestyle, self therapy and possibly natural medicines, and then not suffer any serious symptoms of infection.
Here is data from the World Health Organisation (Evaluation of Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness—a guide to the design and interpretation of observational studies, 2017, Page 6). https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/255203/9789241512121-eng.pdf;jsessionid=A9A9855158060DE5E809075E08DCDCE9?sequence=1):
‘… the influenza vaccinations have been poor performers compared to the effectiveness of other vaccines such as pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, which can reduce the risk of invasive pneumococcal disease by as much as 70–95%, with protection lasting for several years. In contrast, the influenza vaccination against laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection is almost never higher than 60%, and mostly closer to 30% or less, with protection that may wane from one season to the next, or within a season’.
Understand: that the ‘average effectiveness’ of influenza vaccinations is between 40% and 45%—and remember something that is 50%, occurs by chance—which indicates that the yearly influenza vaccinations may be doing more harm then protection, to individuals at risk! Will this occur with the vaccinations for SARS-CoV-2?
What type of vaccines are corporate researchers trying to develop?
There are four traditionally used types of vaccination (Google: Wikipedia).
The strategy employed most often in vaccine development is the induction of robust neutralising antibody responses. However, the hallmark of most respiratory viral infections is their ability to re-infect almost seasonally throughout life, and vaccine formulations must be redeveloped annually to account for the rapid mutations in seasonal strains. Therefore vaccinations that solely promote the induction of neutralizing antibodies are not optimal in providing protection against respiratory virus infections.
Thus, the focus has turned to developing a new type of vaccination to cope with the changing nature of the coronaviruses. During the 2009 H1N1 influenza-A pandemic, vaccine producers quickly switched from producing trivalent seasonal influenza vaccines, to monovalent pandemic vaccines. Still, it took six months until the vaccine was ready to be distributed and used, and it came too late to affect the pandemic wave which took place in the United States in Autumn 2009. The vaccination corporations lost a lot of money.
Currently there are no existing vaccines, or production processes for coronavirus vaccines. However, Chinese researchers identified SARS-CoV-2 quickly, along with its genomic sequence, and from studies on SARS-CoV-1 vaccine it is surmised that the ‘S’ binding protein on the surface of the virus, could be an ideal target for a novel vaccine made from antibodies—that potentially could interfere with this binding site, and could hopefully neutralise the virus. There are so many unknowns yet to be able to determine if this hypothesis will work. And the government is talking about keeping the ongoing restrictions in place, until a successful vaccination is made available for the population.
The SARS-CoV-2 infection appears to cause the most severe pathology in people (mostly men) above 70 years of age. The reason for this is not understood. However, because older individuals are more affected, it will be important to develop vaccines that protect these older people. Unfortunately, older people typically respond badly to vaccinations because of ‘immune senescence’ (deterioration and scarring of the adaptive immune system with age). If vaccinating older individuals cannot be safely used, there is the possibility that they may still benefit indirectly, if mass vaccination of younger people is able to reduce the transmission of the virus to the older people. (For more reading on this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761320301205#bib60, and https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2018.00678/full).
With the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, one of the researchers’ main safety concerns is to avoid a phenomenon called ‘disease enhancement’, in which vaccinated people who do get infected, develop a more severe form of the disease than people who have never been vaccinated. In studies of an experimental SARS vaccine reported in 2004, vaccinated ferrets developed damaging inflammation in their livers after being infected with the virus (https://jvi.asm.org/content/78/22/12672). Disease enhancement has always been a small part of vaccinations, particularly live vaccines.
With all the known challenges, it won’t be easy to develop a safe and effective vaccine to protect humans against any of the coronaviruses—but then these are cold viruses that will not cause harm, if you can keep your immune system healthy as you age, and not depend on conventional medicine to prop-up your health with drugs and interventions.
At the moment you have choices: to depend wholly on the conventional medical system with intervention and drug therapy, or depend partly on these and partly on health-promoting life skills you have learned, or to depend totally on your own health-promoting life skills.
The following are areas of life skills you can investigate:
Learn the techniques to reduce emotional stress. Make sure you get adequate and regular sleep; Remove those plant foods that you know cause you symptoms; Stabilise internal pathogens; Exercise regularly; Regularly detox and cleanse your body; Only have those vaccinations with demonstrated high safety and effectiveness—and prepare for them; Supplement with micro nutrition and eliminate junk food and high volumes of sugar; Live in, or create the environment that makes you feel relaxed and comfortable; Know your life purpose and demonstrate this each day; Support and cherish yourself and other people equally; Use breathing exercises (pranayama) every day.
In writing this blog post, my intention has been to shed some commonsense focus on the coronavirus events that are currently shaping our future lives—more as a discussion, than through criticism.
Bill Giles
Clinical Immunobiologist